Kyrat Zindabad
by Silver Phantom 2
Summary: I'm really unsatisfied with the ending to Far Cry 4, so I decided to write my own. Starts at the end of the most reasonable response to walking into Pagan's Palace and then we see where the story should have ended.
1. Lakshmana and the Lunatic

**Chapter 1**

_Lakshmana and the Lunatic_

The gun shot rang out and echoed through the halls of the Palace.

There was a _thud _as Pagan Min's body fell out of the chair and hit the floor.

For a split second I felt nothing. And then I was fucking glad he was dead.

He deserved to die.

"Fascist fuck." I heard myself say. But distant. Far away. As if I was on the other side of the room.

"_Fascist fuck_." I said again. And it sounded even farther away.

I wanted to kill him. He gave me "the choice." But I was going to do it either way. I shot and killed as many of his toadie sycophants, his local recruits, and as many of the sick Hong Kong triad _fucks _he brought over here. Did he really think I wasn't going to kill him?

_The lunatic_.

I heard that name ring again and again in my ears. I killed him. I killed so many of them. Not killing him didn't even feel possible. But really, why I killed him was because of his fucking monologue. I wish I shot him while he was behind the bar. I wish I shot him in the shoulder, so he'd drop that bottle of ancient scotch and then berate me for forcing him to drop it.

I know. He was a Fascist. He was a gangster fuck. He was a sadistic piece of shit who murdered someone with a pen. He destroyed my family. He destroyed my country. He was a lunatic. I killed him for all of those reasons, but mostly because I was suddenly listening to him monologue and now whatever thoughts he had and whatever "truth" he was going to try and give me was a bit of nervous tissue and blood splattered on the Palace floor behind him, spilling out underneath his chair. No better than the precious crab rangoon stuck somewhere in his throat.

I kind of blacked out a bit. When I came to, I realized I was sitting at the table, and there was crab rangoon in my mouth. I spat it out. In my napkin because old habits die hard, I guess.

I grabbed a candle off the table and was about to set the Palace on fire. There was no king. There never would be again, so what did Kyrat need a Palace for? To parade tourists around like it was the fucking Versailles and talk about how we murdered the old King in his fucking Hong Kong Liberace shique?

But something caught my eye. Outside the Golden Path was celebrating. I assumed it was the Golden Path. I heard shouts, horns, happy victorious screams below, coming from down by the Fortress. We had won. They had won. They _should _celebrate. But I felt nothing. I should celebrate with them. But I felt nothing

The glow of the fireworks caught my eye. Something was out there in the courtyard. I went through the doorway and saw that there was some kind of shrine.

Pagan Min had a shrine? He had outlawed religion in Kyrat. Not that it was a law with a lot of traction. People still mostly practiced as they wished. But _he _certainly got a lot of use out of it. Everyone here practiced religion, including everyone in the Royal Army. But if it was time for a purge, pull out the Anti-Religion Statute. If you found a dissident, take a picture of him visiting a temple or a shrine. If you found a woman you wanted to steal and fuck, blackmail her with a video of her circling a stupa.

Tyrants famously disobeyed their own laws. So maybe it wasn't that unusual. And religious zealots always believed _their _gods justified whatever _they _wanted. He was sure Sabal was out there somewhere talking to Kyra or Banashur or, _fuck_, Yalung, who was telling him how to destroy Amita.

What deity influenced Pagan Min. I almost laughed thinking Pagan Min might have been a secret Christian, maybe influenced by missionaries who invaded the Far East since the Opium Wars. Like the Kims: psychotic Christian Despots who refused their own people the opportunity to speak with their own God, and justified their own rule by sociopaths like Billy fucking Graham.

I walked out there, the light of the fireworks illuminating my path to the shrine in flashes of red and blue and green. When I arrived at the door, I placed my hand gently on the ring and pushed it open.

There was no god. No goddess. Barely any sacred symbols. The first thing I noticed was the picture of a baby girl in a pink kira set above an urn. An urn? It looked a lot like a jar used in some Himalayan ceremonies, but up close… nope it was an urn.

There, on the altar was written "LAKSHMANA MIN. 1986-1987."

It didn't hit me yet.

I looked around more. On a table below some bells was a journal. One of my father's. Shit. How… how did Pagan Min end up with one of them?

Was there something… something secret there? I flipped to one of the last pages. And right there, was my Dad's last entry:

"Ajay, know that everything I've done is for you. All I have ever wanted is for you to grow up in a safe and prosperous country, but that goal required sacrifice."

_Sacrifice. _

_Lakshmana. _

I dropped the journal.

His other entry came to my mind,

"You whore. What you've done is unforgivable. You've betrayed me."

_No._

"What have you done except spread your legs?"

No, no no no...

"Your mission was simple: collect intelligence. Not sleep with the enemy. Not fuck their commander."

I fell to my knees. I threw my backpack onto the floor. I barely had control of my limbs. I just wanted this thing _off of me_.

"Not bear the false king a daughter. What's her name?"

_Lakshmana. Her name was Lakshmana. _

And then I said it out loud, "Lakshmana. Her name was Lakshmana."

I screamed. I couldn't believe it. My mother slept with Pagan Min. I had a sister. A half-sister. And she was _sacrificed_. By my father.

My father killed my sister.

And no one knew what happened to my father. Everyone said it was Pagan Min. But I always knew that was wrong. If it was that fucking dead Fascist, he would have paraded my father's dead body Ghaddafi-style. That shit would have been on Youtube just like Saddam.

It wasn't him. It was my mother.

My mother bore a child to Pagan. My father killed my sister. And my mother killed my father.

I left the shrine. I couldn't breathe. And I fell to sitting on a stone.

The fireworks from the Golden Path's celebration illuminated my suffering. The cheers and bursts of victory highlighted the single truth: the King was dead.

The King was dead. And so was my family.

I had enough to think about… but with my head in my hands, I thought of Noore. I thought of the way Pagan called me a _lunatic. _I had killed so many people. I had fought my way through the country from Banapur to the Royal Palace. I saved people from wolves and bears, and defused bombs, and challenged maniacs in an arena. But I thought of when I tried to save Noore. When I let her live and told her that that psychopath De Pleur had killed her family years ago. How she killed herself seconds later.

This was war. War destroyed my family. Before I was even old enough to speak, they were destroyed. Completely burned. Until there was nothing left. Nothing left but a _lunatic… _who destroyed the lives of hundreds, _thousands_, of other families. I don't remember the last time I cried. Probably when Tony Figgis pushed me down in third grade and when I told… Ishwari, she hit me. "Why didn't you push him back?"

I cried.

I was always a lunatic. I was raised to be that way.


	2. The Real Work

**Chapter 2**

_The Real Work_

It was hard to remember, but I think I drove all night. I was surprised that I didn't have to convince the Golden Path that the guy in the red Royal Guard jeep wasn't one of the pink-jacket-fuck's men. They were drinking, of course, a lot of araa, vodka, and Shangri-lager. Fireworks – which I'm pretty sure were just RPGs – and AK-47 shots launched into the sky, lighting it up. I just kept driving, leaving the explosions and colors behind me.

I must have drove all night. I honestly don't remember. But I do remember waking up in the morning in my parent's bed. It was hard for me to imagine it, but it must have been.

In my dreams I saw Shangri-la. The nightmarish landscape with its holy creatures bleeding and dying was gone. The scenes of ravishing destruction and fresh blood was gone. In its place were the ruins of paradise. Walls were halved, with their stones crumbled into pebbles. The bells I had freed stood high, but still. The Mani wheels that I turned as Kalinag stood similarly still. If I turned them… would anything happen? There were no demons. There were none of those exploding demons dogs. There were no yakshas with fire cannons.

I still had my bow. I still had my knife. But I looked around, and the tiger was gone. I remember that he jumped into the Rakshasa's mouth, and sacrificed himself so the opponent might be defeated and Shangri-la might be freed.

No. That wasn't me. That wasn't me.

I hated that I might be losing my mind. Like Robert Barclay. But I slept. It was the worst sleep I've ever had, but at least when I woke up I could feel like I existed.

I woke up from my phone vibrating on the table next to my bed. My parent's bed. It took me a moment to realize where I was, and that I had driven all night. I picked up the phone and answered it without checking the name, "Hello?"

"Ajay!" it was Amita, "Where are you?"

"What is it?"

"We're… just checking in."

"I did it." I said, "It's done."

"That's great." I could hear the smile on her face. I know they had made it to the Palace and discovered the body. They'd probably found the shrine, too. I wonder how many of them made the connection. I had told enough people that I was looking for Lakshmana. Certainly Amita knew. She was smart enough to make the connection, "Now the real work begins."

I put the phone down and hung up. I didn't have the mental space for her right now. I… I didn't have the space for much of anything.

I picked myself up, feeling like I'd just drank a shelf full of alcohol. I hadn't had anything to drink, though. All I did was kill someone. One guy. A lot more than one. Even yesterday, I killed at least thirty of them. And the one I did kill… was my mother's lover. The father of my sister. My sister. Whom my father murdered. Whom my mother murdered.

I threw the phone against the wall. I wanted to throw it harder, but I just didn't have the strength. It felt like an effort to do something so simple. And yet I knew that if a Heavy walked up the stairs with an MG42, I could be on him in a second, jamming my khukuri into the gaps of his armor, without hesitation. I had done it so many times. It was the best way to kill them.

I stood, knowing I needed to eat something. I walked down to the ground floor and for some reason… felt like, like burning this fucking place down. I stared for a long time at the thangka on the wall. I wondered how much time I lost in those mystic hallucinations. When I collected Robert Barclay's letters, I thought I would hand them over to a scholar once I left Kyrat. But now that I held them, looking back at this thangka scroll, I felt like I had dodged some kind of bullet. Or had I?

Turning around, I saw the little shrine I had set up. There was a photograph of my parents. It seemed inappropriate given the circumstances. Behind it was a statue of Kyra, a ritual object my father, or maybe my mother, had stored away at some point. Taking them out and setting them up seemed like exorcising the house of its demons. Well, the war. I guess was was the demon that destroyed my family.

But now that the war was over, the statue of Kyra seemed like it belonged here… but it was the photo that didn't.

I told myself that the photo would come to represent an idea of peace. An idea of what could have been without Pagan Min and his horde of Triads. What _once was _before Pagan Min and his horde.

I opened the door and walked outside. I heard Reggie and Yogi doing something over by their tent pounding stakes into the ground. I wandered over to them on what felt like a fever-induced gambol and looked over at them. Yogi was indeed pounding the stakes into the ground, while Reggie was reclined smoking a j.

"'ello neighbor," Reggie said, cheerfully getting up.

"Oh! Mister Gale," Yogi said in that Western way, "Well, I guess that's it, then?"

They wandered over to me.

"No more mayhem and destruction?" He took a puff, "Hanging up the old rocket launcher?"

Reggie said it so casually, as if launching rockets was my passion, and I had decided that I was too old for this shit. I wasn't even twenty-six. How was I supposed to just…

"Right, I really love what you've done with the place." _The place_. He pointed at my parent's house, and I turned and looked. I don't know why, I knew what it looked like. I was happy that I got to spruce it up while I was here. But honestly, I hadn't even thought about getting out of here. I missed my return-flight around the time I knocked out De Pleur and stuffed him in the trunk of a car. I guess getting back to India would require a whole new Visa and proof that I was leaving. And that would at least require a stable Internet connection. Was Kyrat capable of that? "I'll be sad to see you go."

"Put on the shelf, as it were, gathering dust." Reggie said, clearly angling for the possibility that they might squat at my parent's house. Honestly, why the fuck not? As long as they promised to treat it with respect, smoke on the porch our outside (good luck with that), and treated it with respect… sure.

"Unless..." Yogi said, interrupting his buddy.

"Some unfinished business, perhaps?" Reggie asked, "Loose ends to snip?"

I honestly wasn't quite sure what he was talking about

"Or people to kill." Yogi said.

I wanted to kill him in that moment. All I could hear was Pagan calling me a _lunatic_. And worse, being right.

"That's what I just said, Donald!" Reggie's use of Yogi's given name shocked me out of that anger.

"It's Yogi, you prat." After a flash of Yogi's own anger, he turned to me and held out the joint, "Smoke?"

"Smoke?" Reggie repeated.

"Not this time," I said. I turned away from the disappointed stoners and walked back towards my parent's house. I heard Yogi pass Reggie the joint and take a puff.

"Thank you," he said.

I crossed the bridge and a second later I felt my phone ring. It was Amita. I thought about not answering. I thought about just taking a jeep and driving the fuck out of this country. Fuck it, I'll cross over into Tibet. Let the Chinese authorities take me prisoner and I'll fucking break out of a PLA dungeon. I was fucking done with this shit. All of this Kyrati _bullshit_. Kyratis! Was this what they were? Was this what _I _was? Fuck. Maybe that's why Hurk was my best friend here.

But then I realized, De Pleur was American, too. And so was Willis. Was I one of them? Or was I Hurk?

"Ajay?" As soon as I heard her grating voice, I realized I was an American Amita. Between De Pleur and Hurk, I was De Pleur.

"What is it?"

"We need your help."

I didn't answer.

"You there?"

"Yeah."

"Is… something wrong?"

"What do you want?"

"We've been hearing some chatter. The Royal Guards and Royal Army know that Pagan is dead, and we think that there's going to be a significant power struggle. We're in charge now and they've got an insurgency packaged and delivered."

She was going to ask me to kill the commanders. I knew it.

"Sounds about right."

"We've singled out the most likely commanders. I'll mark them on your map. Can you take care of the problem?"

And suddenly, the fucking cycle of war was so apparent. What happens when I killed these five guys? Who would rise to the top of the Post-Pagan Insurgency? And who would Amita call to destroy them? To keep cutting the heads off the hydra until there were no insurgents, just singular monsters like the Goat? Ghosts of a war that Kyrat could only Zeno's Paradox into insignificance… while whole lives and families are decimated. _No. _I reminded myself that "decimate" meant to take something down by a tenth. My family was annihilated into nothingness. Until it was just me. And one is not a family.

"What if I said I didn't want to be your dog any more?"

"Ajay?" she asked, sounding like a mother who couldn't believe her son just talked back to her.

"_Fuck _you, Amita."

"Ajay! Is something wrong?"

"You _fucking _heard me. Get one of your drug lord sycophants to do it. I'm fucking _done_."

She was silent. I bet she was thinking about killing me.

I was about to throw the phone. Momentarily, I was reminded that I needed it to try and book a new plane ticket, but then she came back, "Do… you want to talk?"

"The fuck is left to talk about?"

"I'm… worried about you."

"I thought you said the _real _work is beginning now?"

"Yes. But there's no sense is doing the work if I burn out my best men."

So I was one of _her _men. "Yeah," I said, "Let's talk."

"Great," she said, "I'm finishing up some business at Tirtha. Let me know where you are going to be tonight. We'll meet."

I hung up the phone.

_Business. _

For some reason that word stuck in my head.

I grabbed an MS-16 from the gun rack and slipped it inside the passenger seat of the jeep I stole from the Royal Fortress. I got into the driver's seat and turned the keys. Ravi Ray was celebrating the death of their asshole king.

"Preach, brother." I stepped on the gas and headed towards Tirtha.


	3. A Golden, Shining Path

**Chapter 3**

_A Golden, Shining Path_

I stopped the car in front of the village, so the river was still visible but the people looked like Lego figurines. Just looking at the body language, I knew something was wrong. Very wrong. I stepped out of the driver's seat and slung the rifle over my shoulder. My hand gripped the hilt of my khukri.

As I approached, I saw Amita from behind. She was surveying the village. In the background someone was weeping hysterically. It wasn't the kind of liberation I was expecting.

Amita spoke to a Golden Path soldier, "I want you to go into every home, and find every child. _Every_ child. You bring them back here, to me. Go." She pointed off into the village and the blue-and-gold toady walked off with his AK.

"What's going on?" I asked, arm's length from Amita Peron.

"We need more soldiers to fight the holdouts from the Royal Army, and I need to start thinking about Kyrat's future. We have opium fields to protect, laws to enforce, workers to keep in line."

Weird how opium was so high on the list.

"So you're forcing the people to join the Golden Path?"

I was so used to the language of _the Golden Path _but what Amita was talking about was recruiting child soldiers, enforcing her perfect vision of prosperity in Kyrat, building a Drug Empire.

"I'm sacrificing our liberties for peace later." Where the fuck was the caring _not if I burn out my best men_ woman I was on the phone with three hours ago? "You can either get in line or get out of the way." I think she was pissed I showed up here. Amita was anything but stupid. She knew I was raised in America, sheltered from the truth of third world dictatorships like this. Where freedom fighters convinced themselves they needed to oppress _certain _people to further the cause of liberty. Mao was just Chiang Kai-shek dressed in red. Amita was Pagan Min with a pretty face and a local accent.

The Golden Path soldiers – every bit of thug as the Royal Army – held the villagers at gun point. A man in a felt hat held his hands together begging Amita in Nepali, "Please, let my children go. They are all we have. Please." Amita looked tired of it. As if the cries of desperate peasants were the annoying ring of her morning alarm clock.

She walked over and slapped him on the shoulder. Not cruelly, but in a "get you shit together" way. Yeah, get your shit together, dude, and accept that we're going to turn your children into crypto-Fascist slave-drivers who will hold women at gunpoint as we harvest opium so I can buy an apartment in Vegas. She picked him up and stood him on his feet, "This is a good thing." she shouted in English, "Your children will help Kyrat become a better place." She held out her arms, as if to show all of the fucks she gave about their children's lives, or even the condition of Kyrat. It was hard for Pagan to see the poverty outside of his window when he lived in exquisite luxury on the top of a mountain. I'm sure Amita didn't see the irony, "If you _love _Kyrat, you will turn around, go into your homes. Or, I will have you shot."

She turned around as the father pulled his wife away from the scene towards the house. Maybe they would make it out, I suppose was the calculation they were making. Amita turned to me with a sitcom-y look as if to say _Peasants, what can ya' do? _The woman was crying. The father pulled her away as he muffled her sobs at the risk of bothering Amita more.

"Why are you doing this?" I asked.

She looked stupefied, as if I'd just asked her an SAT question, "I'm doing what's best for my country." She looked away and started walking back towards the bridge, over to the vehicles.

_Fuck you_. "And what about Bhadra?" Why did she come into my head now? Maybe it was because the first time I met Amita was with Bhadra? Or was it just because Amita was setting up this new forward-thinking dictatorship – just like Pagan's – and the one person to get lost in it all would be a young girl with a bright future who represented everything that Amita didn't want, "What does she have to say about this?"

Amita stopped walking and spoke without looking at me, "It doesn't matter what she has to say. I've sent her away." She turned to me with a smirk, "I don't need a Tarun Matara here for our enemies to rally behind."

"Sent her away? Really?" I wanted to strangle her. Her face turned down, she could sense my fury rising, "Where?"

"It's not your concern." She knew we were done, here. She knew I would never kill another person for her, "And don't bother trying to find her. Bhadra's not coming back." She walked over to the vehicles parked on the other side of the river.

I turned back to the village. Eight Golden Path thugs led ten boys to their vehicles. The oldest was maybe sixteen. The youngest was around twelve. _Kids_. My motherland, run by a pair of heroin-crazed insane dictators and a bunch of child soldiers. I wondered if there were Sudanese and Sierra Leonese guys like me who saw their brothers, and nephews, and younger cousins get recruited to do the murderous work of insane assholes like this.

I wanted to scream something at her. But she had nothing left to say to me. She wasn't going to ask I kill those Royal Guard fucks. I bet at that moment she was just hoping I'd cross back over to India and catch the next plane out.

When people say _my country_, usually the emphasis is on _country_. Like it's a thing that we inhabit and therefore care for. I like _my house _because I live there and I want to make it a better place to be. But some people, I've noticed this everywhere, emphasize the _my_. As if it was something they own. I wonder if I spoke to Kim, or Bibi, or Vlad if they'd say the same thing. Emphasize that statement the same way.

The jeeps drove away with their new "recruits." Amita and two of the Golden Path thugs were chatting in English. I could tell Amita was trying hard not to look at me. Her truck was still a little ways off. They decided to leave me in the village, apparently, and started walking, all three of them to the truck.

I'm not proud of what happened next. Hell, I wasn't proud of anything that happened before this, either. Save for that first heavy I took down with my khukri. But I guess, when you have a hammer…

I marched over and pulled out a throwing knife, hitting the thug on her left at the base of his neck. I was close enough that I could see the blade sink up to the hilt.

I swung the rifle up into my hand, holding it one handed and firing a shot essentially point-blank range into the chest of the thug on her right before he could even get his finger in the trigger.

Her two men dead before she could comprehend a thought, Amita turned, facing me, her eyes steeled. I bet she never expected her dog to bite her.

But I'd already dropped the rifle before blasting a hole through that Golden Path's heart. I took my khukri out and with one hand grabbed Amita's wrist before her arm could push me away. I sank the blade into her side, until it came out under her arm pit on the right side of her body. She didn't scream. Didn't have the diaphragm to scream. But I could see the look of betrayal in her eyes. She really was that fucking crazy.

I picked up her body and walked over to the creek, setting her down on the rocks. The shock of the water must have roused what was left of her consciousness. I thought she was dead.

She coughed, a thick red cough. She had far less than a minute to live. "Treason, then?"

"Fuck you." I said.

"You're just going to give the country over to those nut cases? The monks and sadhus? Really?" But it sounded like her throat was filling up with liquid.

"No. But now that you mention it, Sabal's alive."

Now she really looked up at me with betrayal. Far more than when I murdered her, "Sa… Sabal?"

"Yeah. I let him live." I could tell what she was thinking. I let him live and I killed her. Didn't seem fair. I guess nothing seems really fair when someone you thought was your friend literally stabs you, "He was right about you," I said, hoping it hurt.

"What?"

"You are no better than Pagan. You're Pagan with a pussy."

She laughed. Or gave a little _heh _given the circumstances, "Not quite." She looked up at me, not with pain or betrayal in her eyes, but with a desperate hope for cruelty, "I didn't fuck your mom."

I'm sure it took a lot of strength to say that clearly.

A lunatic would have mashed her body into a pulp or beaten her face until it was unrecognizable, "Amita, just so you know, I'm not doing this because I hate you. I do. I'm just… that's not the goal here. I'm doing it so they'll never find your body. The demon fish are gonna _love _you." I picked my foot up, and pushed her body into the river.

I hope those last few seconds were unpleasant.


	4. Blue Demons, Red Tara

**Chapter 4**

_Blue Demons, Red Tara_

I learned that the woman who followed Noore around topless carrying an AK-47 was named Tara. She was leaning against a stone pillar with her arms crossed and when I approached, she just looked at me up and down and said, "I know that look. Wanna fight?"

I nodded, "Yeah."

"I can send you in at two p.m. Think you can wait that long, killer?"

I wanted to know who was running things without Noore around. The Arena had been in Kyrat since the 1759, so surely there was a succession plan in place, but still.

"Yeah," I said, "I can wait."

"Go get me a cup of araa." She ordered, "I'll give you something extra if you do."

_Extra? _She was cute. I wasn't planning on getting laid here. I thought for a little while Amita and I would've had a thing. Now I could only imagine that we might've hate fucked. Actually, scratch that, she was dead now. I didn't want to think of her like that. Yuma, either. But I still dreamt about her in that half-conscious state. Thinking of Tara like that was just too… obvious, "Extra?"

"Yeah," she said, "You killed the King. I think that deserves something extra."

"So why am I getting you the araa?"

"Because I want it and you're going to get it for me."

Hard to argue with that logic. I went to the general store and came back with a bottle of araa stored in an old bottle of Kyrati gin. The lady at the counter even gave me a small stack of plastic cups. I tossed her an extra few rupees. Not like I was hurting for the cash.

I came back, avoiding a couple guys doing their own arena fight surrounded by a crowd of gamblers cheering them on. They were so drunk you could smell their bodies preserving all the way from my spot standing with half-naked Tara.

I handed her a plastic cup and poured her some araa.

"A gentleman," she said, "Thanks, Englishman."

"I'm not English."

"American?" She asked, "Same thing."

"They're… not." I said, smiling and drinking. _Who gives a fuck? _

"Hey, you're going to win in there, yeah?" She asked, throwing back her own drink.

"Yeah," I said, "I think so."

"You better. I have a lot riding on you." She held her hand out for more. I poured, "A lot of people do." She drank and said, "Everyone knows you killed Pagan."

"Everyone?"

"Oh yeah," she said, "We all know you hated him. That's why you came here, right?"

"Uh… no." I said.

She could see something in my face and looked at me sideways, "No? What happened? Are you like that Hurk? Had your California Sadness and came here to fight in a war?"

"I'm Kyrati, you know?" I stared down at the bottle, "Kyrati-American."

"Kyrati-American." She laughed, "Sorry about your mother. She was well-liked here."

I took another drink, "Fuck my mom." I said.

Tara laughed, "Oh? Like that, huh? Well, you would've known her better."

She palmed me something.

I looked down at it. It was a syringe filled with a purple liquid.

"Win this thing like you won the war."

"It was hard." I said, "Took more than a single syringe."

"Well, then… do it."

I handed her the bottle. The doors started to open by the front of the Arena, and the crowd started to go inside. I nodded and walked towards the fighting ring. I was led down below by another of Noore's assistants, topless and painted. She brought me to a room and locked the door. Down at the bottom of the stairs leading up to a pair of massive doors was a grenade launcher. A GL-A87 to be specific. There was just a letter T marked in paint on the top. Tara, I assumed. I liked her. I was a bit tipsy, and definitely had too much blood running through my system. That was probably good given that in a few seconds, I'd be out there exploding guys into particulate.

"… for _bloody slaughter!" _

I could hear the sounds of dogs barking, getting riled up and ready to tear apart human flesh.

Horns blasted outside in the arena over the cheer of the crowd.

The doors began to open. I picked up the launcher at the last second, and walked towards the blinding light.

When I opened my eyes, the light wasn't blinding at all. In fact it was the middle of the night. There was no light, just the cold. Tara was lying next to me, and I gather she was way more used to sleeping out in the elements than I was. I was pampered. When I slept with Boy Scout Troop 108 in the Adirondacks, I had a sleeping bag and a tent. When we went to the Winter Jamboree we rented a _cabin_. Tara slept naked in a ditch and considered herself lucky.

But we didn't have a ditch. We were lying in a field a hundred yards from the arena grounds. Shanath was safe, ironically. The Golden Path and Royal Army teams that made it out of the Arena alive shared alcohol and women once the fights were done. And if not, if they couldn't keep their anger and rage and alcohol in check, the crowds maintained a culture of keeping the teams separate in the first place.

_Shanath is safe_ was a weird sentence to say to myself. Kyrat wasn't safe. And Shanath was in Kyrat. I guess the statement is _relative to Kyrat in general, Shanath is safe_. _Ironically safe._

Tara was beautiful and slept with a smile on her face. I'm glad I cold have spent the night with her. This _cold _fucking night. I pulled my jacket over my waist. Didn't want her to see me like this. i.e. cold.

I tried getting some of those sights out of my head. Tara helped. The warmth of her touch. The feel of her body wrapped around mine. The sound of her voice so close to my ear. That all helped clear away the sight of a guy disintegrating into a cloud of blood, or the guy in the Bane mask with an insane aim and throw exploding into a fireball, or just the countless thugs dressed in red, or the ones in blue, or covered in yellow or green Holi dust.

When it happened, I felt nothing. What was the old quote? "When you shoot a terrorist what do you feel? Recoil." But now, afterward, I felt… something. It wasn't that they deserved to die. They most definitely did. Amita deserved to die. Every bastard I heard say "The best day of my life was the day I pledged myself to Pagan Min." Pagan deserved to die. De Pleur deserved to die. Noore…

Fuck. For every "best day of my life" men in his Army, there was a "I don't know what to do, if I join the Golden Path, I'll still be fighting against those I love." For every one who resorted to violence because they were hungry, there were kids conscripted into fighting for a psychopath like Pagan or Amita.

"Hey." Tara was waking, "Want to move over to my bed?"

"You have a bed?"

"You think I sleep out here every night?"

I laughed, "You told me you were used to it."

"I slept outside a lot. But not any more. Noore gave us food and a place to sleep."

I idly wondered out loud, "How did you come into Noore's service?"

"Pagan Min killed my family when I was twelve." she said matter of factly, "I was taken by one of his men and passed around a barracks for a couple months. I managed to escape and was going to kill myself. But Noore found me first. She was working on a plan to try and get rid of him. But he got wind of it and decided to fuck with her by sending her those letters."

_Fuck_.

"I'm sorry about that. Amita ordered me to kill her, but I tried not to."

"We saw. You didn't kill her."

"I know… I just… I guess of all the people I didn't kill," and it wasn't a lot, "I guess I wish I _did_. The way it went down… I just…"

"I know what you mean." she said. She helped me up and handed me my pants. It was kind of funny seeing her body like this, her breasts and arms and shoulders all made up with the Holi powder, while the lower half of her body was nothing but skin. I went to pick up the… cloth that served as her outfit, but she already had it and wrapped it around her waist, "C'mon."

I only put on my pants and my jacket. She led me around through a back entrance I didn't even know existed. Up the stairs and down the hall, there were chambers on both sides. No doors, just some heavy curtains. She led me to the third chamber on the right and moved the curtain aside, "In." I passed underneath her arm and behind the curtains. The room beyond was windowless, but had a pair of butter lamps lighting up a small altar underneath a frightening thangka scroll. I wasn't well-versed enough in all of the Himalayan gods to know who was depicted. In the dim light it looked like Yalung, but I was pretty skeptical that Tara was as crazy as a Yalung worshiper.

There was a bed. As soon as Tara walked over to it, she took off her skirt, letting it drop to the floor. She moved softly, loosely, as if in a dream. She turned to me, and I could barely make out her features in the light. She beckoned me closer. I stepped forward, dropping the rest of my clothes to the ground while she unzipped my jacket.

"Ajay Ghale," she whispered. _Gah-lay _she said in the Asian way, not _Gale _like I'd heard all my life and got tired of correcting when Yogi and Noore said it. She leaned forward and kissed me, pulling her body up, lifting her legs and wrapping them around my still clothed waist. She was light. Probably from a life adjacent to hunger. But her breasts weren't so light, and pressed against my chest.

It was weird. Being with her, on this bed that was only slightly softer than the earth outside, I felt like the damnation from killing so many people, so many of my own countrymen, distant cousins every one of them, even those Hong Kong mercenaries had families somewhere, all of it just suddenly didn't matter when Tara pressed her lips and body against me, and ran her fingers through my hair.

In the dim light of the butterlamp, with her hands running up and down my scarred body, bullet grazes still throbbing on my arm and against my right leg, I never wanted it to end. Left to my own devices, I couldn't let go of those demons. It was like Durgesh. I was a master of stealth when I had a gun in my hand, but I was completely defenseless against the yakshas and rakshas in my own head.

But I had Tara. And every kiss and every touch was an arrow I could use to help think clearly.


	5. Gods and Kings

**Chapter 5**

_Gods and Kings_

I woke up and Tara was gone. She left a bowl of rice and dahl and a note saying, "Tea in thermos." I picked it up and poured myself a cup. There were no windows carved into this mountain, so it could have been night outside. But it felt like morning. She was probably at… work. I laughed to myself thinking of being an Arena Guard "work." But I guess that's what it was. She was in a position of power and authority, and was, ironically, respected.

After eating and drinking the tea, I felt a lot better. I hoped she was feeling pretty good after last night. I took the note and tea as a good sign. The last thing I wanted was to have some kind of rebound in my motherland and leave on an awkward sex note.

I walked out the hall and into the sunlight. I was a bit surprised that there were no stragglers outside the Arena's side entrance. I guess Noore probably had the place pretty locked down. I would have to ask Tara if any of the guards had a side-gig. Looking back, the place reminded me of a dominatrix studio.

I was happy to find out that most of the people near the Shanath Arena were calm. It was still early by the looks of it. There weren't any drunk assholes having a much smaller stakes Arena. In fact there was a small circle that had sat down to breakfast. A couple of them called me over and offered me a cup of tea.

I sat down and was handed a cup of hot liquid. The Kyratis, three men and four women, asked me about Pagan Min. I was reluctant to talk about shooting him, but they did ask where, and I told them "In the fact."

"Kyrat Zindabad." A woman in a green shirt said without emphasis.

The men lifted their cups of tea into the air and said, with varying degrees of happiness, "Kyrat Zindabad!"

_Long live Kyrat, indeed. _

As the conversation progressed, they were talking about the Golden Path, about the Royal Army, and about Kyrat's future. I mildly regretted joining them. I didn't want to think about politics, but here I was.

"Amita is in charge now. If she can defeat what's left of Pagan's Army, she'll be… what, Queen?"

"No," someone said, "Kyrat will not accept Amita as Queen."

"Why not?"

"She's not a member of the Royal family."

"Well neither was Pagan."

"Exactly, and the people didn't accept him, either."

"The people will support whoever has a decent claim to the throne."

"Which is no one. Every one of the king's family is dead."

"Pagan didn't have a family."

"Not him, sahib, old King."

"Oh, right. Old King."

"I think it will be Sabal."

"Sabal is dead."

"Not what I heard."

My ears picked up. Did… did people know? Last I saw Sabal, he dropped his khukri onto a floor with scattered pecha. _Gone, brother, _he said, _gone. _

"What did you hear?" I asked.

"I heard that Sabal was alive."

"Ah, I heard Amita killed him."

"Honestly, Ajay," someone said, "I heard you killed him." Two others nodded along to having heard that.

I didn't know if a refusal would have any traction with them, but I figured I might as well tell the truth, "I didn't actually."

"Really?"

"Really."

"Well, I heard it was Amita."

"You heard he was alive?" I asked the person who first mentioned it, "What did you hear?"

"I heard," she said, "that he was going to attempt to bring Kyrati refugees back. Monks, nuns, sadhus, and sannyasins. All the religious folk that Pagan banned."

"Good," one of them said, "Pagan that heretic cost us so much good karma."

"Bah, we work all day to feed their _precious _stomachs. They should be paying _us_."

"Huh..." I tried to think.

"That means he's going to try to start a holy war. He'll bring them here, the Lamas, the Gurus, they'll be fought by Amita's Golden Path, and Sabal will be hailed the country's hero. If Amita doesn't declare herself Queen, Sabal is going to claim to be King as protector of the Dharma in Kyrat."

There was a round of either quiet nodding and agreement with the statement or sounds of coughed up disagreement.

I stood and walked over to Tara. She was back at her post, leaning with her arms by her colorful breasts, the colored dust reapplied and looking new, and was greeting newcomers to the fighting pits, "Hey," I said, "You look nice."

"Eyes up here, Ajay." She smiled.

"Have you heard rumors about Sabal?" I asked.

She nodded, "Of course. I've heard rumors about everyone."

"I mean, in the past couple of days."

"About Sabal? Yeah I heard that he's dead. I heard that he's alive."

"If he's dead, I didn't kill him."

"Um..."

"Amita ordered me to. But I let him go."

"Oh… really?"

"Yes. I… I almost did it. But I let him pass and he walked away."

"Where did he go?"

"I don't know."

She put her hand to her chin as if in thought, "Have you tried Jalendu Temple?"

"No. Should I?"

"He was pretty upset when you blew it up."

Yeah, he was.

"Try there. I bet he's doing some serious soul searching. Especially if he was left out of the big fight up there at the fortress."

It was a good plan. And if he wasn't there, I'd have to try Chal Jama. But for some reason, I thought Tara had the right idea

"Are you going to go to Jalendu?" she asked.

I nodded, "Yeah." I was about to lean forward and give her a kiss… like I was some lovestruck fifteen year old in an American high school. She put her hand on my lips. Her body language said _back off, creep_, but her face and eyes were a lot softer.

"Save it," she said and with a wink, "Later."

I let her continue her work and ran off to the main road.

I avoided patrols. I couldn't trust the Royal Army nor the Golden Path. With the power struggles erupting all over Kyrat, I imagined that there were few I could trust. Shanath was a nice and quiet piece of ironic serenity, and my parents' house was too far to be of much notice (though it did cross my mind that the place might get torched by some Royalists out of pure revenge while I was gone), but be that as it may, I thought that if I actually got to Jalendu, I might come across some Golden Path guys who were loyal to Amita and knew what I did, or maybe some loyal to Sabal, who either aware or unaware that I didn't kill him, might be protective of him or his memory. So I stayed low, only revealing myself if I knew for certain that I knew who I was coming across.

Then I saw it: the ruins of Jalendu. Ruined because I literally let in the demolition team and set up the bombs. It was the place that secured Amita's victory in the Golden Path's power struggle. To leave it standing would open the door for Sabal to enthrone Bhadra as Tarun Matara and continue Kyrat's constellation of medieval traditions. To destroy it was to announce a new era, one not linked to the past except by geography, one not driven in the name of a vanity project by a Cantonese drag queen. All for naught, I guess.

There was a boat with a single paddle sitting below the rock I stood on. I hopped in and pushed it off. As I got closer to the ruins, I could see someone there among the rubble. It was a single man, shirtlessly moving with purpose around the center of the island. Of course, as I got closer, the harder it got to see as the island's topography moved up above my field of vision. I pulled the boat ashore and tapped the khukri on my side. Worst case scenario already popping into my head.

I walked up to the plaza in front of what was once the temple's main gates and saw clearly here. The shirtless figure was Sabal. I could tell by the way he moved that he noticed me, but he tried not to let it deter him. He was moving boxes and stones. He picked up small things and set them down inside crates. As I moved closer it was clear that he was trying to set some order to chaos. Rocks and stones went in a pile according to relative size. Smaller pieces, especially ritual objects that had scattered across the island, went into boxes.

He turned around when we were a house's length apart and said, "Hello, brother." A lot more cheery than usual. Given the circumstances.

"Hey there, Sabal."

"It's good to see you."

"Is it?"

"It is." he said, sitting down.

"I'm sorry, I only have water to offer you."

"That's fine. I'm… I heard a rumor that you were here."

"The rumor was correct." He indicated the open sky, "As you can see, I don't try to hide it."

"What are you doing?"

"Rebuilding." he said.

"The whole temple? By yourself?"

"Not quite yet. Building up some karma. For my trip to Nepal and India."

"What are you going to do there?"

"Talk to Kyrati refugees. Hopefully convince some monks and sannyasins to come back. Pagan drove them all out, as you know. But now, now that we can rebuild, I hope they'll come back. I was just hoping to do a bit of work before I left."

"How long do you think you'll be gone?"

"A year, maybe. Ideally I can come back in between. Do one trip to Nepal, and one to India, maybe."

"It's a good idea. It'd be nice to have a new temple here. Along with all of the… other places destroyed."

Sabal smiled, "We rebuild. It's all we can do."

"You know, there's another rumor going around."

"That I'm going to start an insurgency?"

"Yeah."

"I'm not. Pagan was a bastard who had no problem killing… well anyone. If Amita wants to kill me, well she's proved she's perfectly capable at this point. So I'll accept it when it comes. I've chosen a peaceful path."

I… wasn't totally convinced of that part, "Amita won't be coming after you, Sabal."

"Why not?"

I'm not sure if this was the right thing to tell him, "Amita's dead."

"She…" and he saw the look in my eyes that I couldn't stop, "You killed her?"

I nodded, "Yeah. You were right."

He smiled, then, betraying his new _peaceful path_. He must have realized it, because he immediately changed his face, "Her Karma came back to her." He reached down and took a long drink of water.

"I killed her because you were right. She's no better than Pagan."

"No." Sabal said, "She was not."

"But I didn't kill her so you could reign like an old style King. One of the Kyrarajas."

"Is that what you think? That I want to be King?"

"Pagan Min is dead. Amita is dead."

"And?"

"_And _you had ambitions to rule Kyrat."

"The Golden Path. I had ambitions to rule the Golden Path. Look what it got me." He smiled as if he knew a secret I didn't. He stood and wandered over to a box, rummaging through it.

"I'm just telling you… you were right about Amita. About the drug fields. The suicide nets and the factory towns. More than that, she was… she was recruiting child soldiers."

"And if I had my way, I'd slaughter every one of her followers. They saw her example. They saw this path forward." He pulled something out of the box. It was a sheet of paper. A pecha page like those of a Tibetan religious text, "Brother, the challenge of Tradition vs. Modernity is a theme in these mountains. In Nepal. In Bhutan. In Tibet. We've all had to face our challenges. I'm under no illusions that I am a Traditionalist. A hardline traditionalist. It's because tradition is what we have to cling to, when the diseases of modernity knock at the door, coming in with all of the so-called _blessings _of it."

"Now wait..."

"No, you wait," Sabal said, "Because you're American. Everything needs to be big and shiny and new, but look." He held out the paper and handed it to me.

The text was written in both Tibetan and Devanagari script. My Tibetan was rudimentary and my Kyrati at a fourth-grade level. But I could make out my mother's name, my father's name, and my name, "What's this?"

"That's your pedigree."

"My… pedigree?" Was I a show pony?

"Modernity must come to Kyrat. But it must come in a way that benefits Kyratis. Think about what megacorporations could do to Utkarsh. Or what Nestle would do to our tea and rice by poisoning our irrigation fields. Or what Hilton Hotels would do to Banapur. What could a roving train of tourists would do to the Sleeping Sisters and Chal Jama? That's not a Kyrat worth fighting for. Nevermind the dictatorial madness that Amita wanted us to stay in."

"I'm agreeing with you. You don't need to convince me," I said.

"Yes. And yet, all of those things are at some degree inevitable. And so we must cling to the pillars of tradition." He pointed to the paper, "That is tradition."

"My pedigree?"

"Yes." He said, "During the First Civil War between the Kyrati Revolutionary Congress and the Royal family, the we had King Avinash V. He had two sons. One died fighting the nationalists and the other was educated in Berlin and decided to stay there with his boyfriend."

"Never came back?"

"Nope. Smart guy. It was thought that the throne would pass to King Avinash's only daughter Karpuradevi, but then a Hong Kong Triad boss showed up to reinvigorate the Royal Army with his money, and guns, and drugs, and he had one more thing up his sleeve: a fourteen-year-old named Prithviraj. Kyrat has only had four Queens in its history, and that's including Kyra. So when the choice came down to Karpuradevi vs. Prithviraj, everyone went with Prithviraj. Well the old King died and Karpuradevi quickly went into exile in Bhutan. I hear she did quite well for herself marrying into a rich family. And Pagan Min quickly enthroned Prithviraj I, until he, too, died. And the royal line ended, Pagan Min declared himself Kyraraja."

"I'm aware of the history."

"Well, for the longest time we assumed Prithviraj was a Kyrati orphan that Pagan Min happened upon in his drug empire. A sex slave or something else with a propped up pedigree. At our most charitable, we thought maybe he was the son of a rich Kyrati who lived in India that had crossed Pagan and now ended up with his son. Either way, the Golden Path operated for decades under the assumption that Prithviraj was not a member of the Royal family." And he pointed at the sheet in my hands, "That document says otherwise."

I scanned the letters. Prithviraj's name was not on it. But my name was.

"What are you talking about? What does this have to do with me?"

"It has to do with you because Prithviraj claimed his father was a Prince Someshvara. There _was _a Prince Someshvara. But he had gone to India in the early '80s because of 'differences' in the royal family. He earned a degree as a nuclear physicist and died in 1999 from throat cancer. Turns out he very much _was _the son of King Gotama II. Gotama II's _daughter_, so Someshvara's sister, was Princess Ishwari."

"Ishwari?"

"Your mother."

I turned my face to the page once more.

"That document is a part of your mother's initiation record as Tarun Matara."

I knew she was a Tarun Matara, but that was an _incarnate _lineage. And it passed as soon as my mother entered womanhood. What did…

"Ajay, according to that document, you are the last living heir of the Kyrati royal family. The main line of King Avinash V is gone. The line of Prince Someshvara and his son Prithviraj is extinguished. By Gotama II, and through your mother the Tarun Matara, _Princess _Ishwari, you are the rightful King of Kyrat."


	6. Ishwari's Intentions

**Chapter 6**

_Ishwari's Intentions_

When I was fourteen, I wanted to go shoot paintball. I asked my friend Daniel if he wanted to go with me. But Daniel's parents went to Living Christ Church and despite their support for Bush and the Iraq War, wanted to discourage violence. Daniel's mom tried encouraging her son to play music, or at the very least adventure games. _Legend of Zelda _was more of her style. The Shinto allegories were lost on her. My mother bought me _Call of Duty _when it came out, and a stack of World War II books. Around the time she was driving me to play paintball with boys whose parents weren't zealots, she asked me what my favorite World War II weapon was. When she dropped me off, she told me I'd get a beating for every speck of paint she found on my clothes.

I thought she was just trying to keep me clean.

But throughout the year after that, she was true to her word. I got one beating per speck of paint on my body. Often I tried to explain that the paint was my own, or was from something on the battlefield. The playing field. Sometimes she bought it if I could lie convincingly. But other times it was harder to hide.

So I got really good at being stealthy. I got really good at hitting marks before they could shoot me back.

When I was twelve, she threw me immediately into the Boy Scouts. She demanded to the guys there that I be disciplined. She needed me strong. Taking direction. But then when it came time, she insisted I become Patrol Leader. And after that, she pushed me to become Senior Patrol Leader. A position I held until I became Eagle Scout.

But way before that, my first year as a Scout, I went to camp and while the other 12 year olds were taking Basket Weaving and Leather Working Merit Badges. Mom insisted I take Archery, Riflery, and Wilderness Survival. Wilderness Survival, the Scout Masters argued, was only for boys sixteen and over. She insisted. The Scout Masters were a bit… nervous about that. But Ishwari was an active member of Troop 108. She was always making food for the Troop, providing us with Kyrati cuisine that added some spice (quite literally) to the same array of sausages, eggs, and balogna sandwiches.

I survived. Obviously. And every summer afterward, Ishwari made sure to test my skills when we went for a private hike and climb somewhere in the Appalachians.

But it wasn't just that. There was a Tibetan temple in New York City. There happened to be a monk there from Kyrat, an old Utkarshi, and when I was ten my mom started taking me to visit him. He started giving me lessons. My Kyrati never got very good. My Tibetan was even worse. Thankfully the Utkarshi's English was pretty good, living in America all that time I guess, and Mom sent me there to learn more than language any way: I learned the names of all the Tibetan Emperors, the Kings of Nepal, the Battles of Kyrat, the Gya and Wangchucks of Bhutan. Not only those, I learned what they did, what their effects were today. I learned the names of Banashur and Kyra and Yalung and how the Tarun Matara's were chosen.

I'd grown up knowing my mother was a Tarun Matara. It was a fact. A statement. I was from Kyrat in the same way that I had black hair. My mother was a Tarun Matara and I had brown eyes. When I encountered some actual racist assholes in high school, I beat them until I got suspended from school. Mom congratulated me on winning the fight.

When I was thirteen my mother started dating a Peruvian guy and insisted I spend time with him at the garage. I learned how to diagnose engine problems and fix cars.

Ishwari did this. After she killed Dad, she could have stayed at the Royal Palace. I could've been given Kyrat on a silver platter. I would've been raised with Pagan as my new Dad. I wanted to gag that it was even possible but…

_Fuck_.

Pagan always took that weird tone with me. A weird tone. He referred to himself as _uncle. _

She wanted me to kill him. I stared at Sabal and tried to figure out how my mother could know he was a monster, and yet still bear him a child. Now I knew. She _knew _he was a monster. She knew she had to leave. But… she also loved him. As much as one _can _love a monster.

That wasn't the point. They were both dead. They were dead and I'd never know. I couldn't believe anything Pagan said. For that matter I couldn't believe anything mom said. But I could count on what she did. She raised me a Kyrati-American. She raised me to be a warrior, as much as she could in Jackson Heights. The paintballs graduated to World War II era weaponry. We even had a couple agents at our house, I don't remember what agency, asking about the guns. We were more than regulars down at the range, and Esteban confirmed to them that we were big fans of shooting.

"Fuck." I said out loud, "I'm… I'm the fucking King."

"Yes, brother. You are." Sabal said, smiling, "Kyrat is yours to rule."

"Fuck." I said again, but this time other words came out of my mouth, "I'm not the fucking King."

"Yes, brother, you are." he laughed, "I better stop calling you 'brother.' That would imply that I'm a prince. In line for the throne."

And suddenly, it was way too clear. Amita was gone. Sabal becoming a dictator and using the doctrine of _upaya _to justify his rule, even declaring himself King and being crowned by a couple rishis, was the _best case scenario. _Sabal was a zealot, but he wasn't an asshole. But man does a crown have a way of turning guys like him into monsters.

Men like me?

If that was the best case scenario, what was the worst case scenario? Two or more factions of the Royal Guard fight against two or more factions of Pagan's remnant forces. A civil war that keeps breaking out into more and more factions vying for control of a more fractional portion of the country.

"Ajay, it's been obvious this whole time. Who's worked harder to destroy Pagan Min's army than you? Who can lead Kyrat to a state of modernity _and _respect our traditions? Who embodies Kyrati traditions more than the _last living heir of the Kyraraja_?"

He was arguing for restraint against his own faction. It didn't feel real. But I guess that summed up religion in a nutshell: show them a piece of paper they can believe in and logic goes out the window. Even self-interest, to a degree.

Not only that, but he was making _sense_. If Amita and Sabal were leaders of political factions in a Kyrati parliament, they might be incentivized to compromise. Kyrat might have found a peaceful way into the 21st Century that also had all of its traditions in tact. But instead they were rivals in an insurgency and tried to have each other killed.

But Amita was gone. I jammed my khukri through her body and kicked her body into a river. If I left, there was no one holding back Sabal and his influence. I could be good for him. I could be good for this country.

But fuck if I wanted to. I wanted the fuck out of here. I wanted to catch the next flight to JFK. Get pissed at a club. Meet up with Daniel (he'd since become obsessed with Sartre, had renounced God, had a massive falling out with his family, and was dealing with his women issues one-night-stand at a time). Find a couple of co-eds looking to blow off steam. Wake up in the morning with a hangover and make eggs. Kyrat would be like a dream.

I could see it now, _Where is your family from? _

_Kyrat. _

_Where is that? _

_It's in the Himalayas. _

_Oh that's cool. _

_Yeah, Ajay just got back from there, actually. _

_Oh really, what'd you do? _

_Eh. Killed a bunch of people. _

_Oh… wow. _

"I'll do it." I said.

He literally fell to his knees, "_Mero raja..._" he said in the Kyrati dialect. My language was good enough to understand: _My king…_

"But you have to swear me something."

"Anything."

"Swear to me that you will never take up the khukri again."

"I swear, my King. I will never take up the blade or fire a shot unless Kyrat were to be invaded by outsiders again."

"_No!" _I shouted, "Not even then. Not even if Pagan Min rises from the dead in Hong Kong and invades Kyrat with another army of Triads. You'll leave it. You'll retire to the mountains. You'll sit in meditation for a hundred years before you resort to violence _ever again_."

"Yes, my King."

"Swear it!" I said. I sounded like a child who watched one too many episode of _Game of Thrones_.

"I swear. I will never hurt anyone. Even if they attack me."

"Good." I said, "Then I'll agree to be your King."

And then he started weeping. I thought he was being ridiculous, but look at where we were standing. Look at what he was doing moments before I arrived. While I arrived. If Kyrat had a biggest fan competition, Sabal would at least place in the top three. I grew up in America, where we framed out whole independence movement as an anti-royalist enlightened crusade. We laughed that the British still had their Crown and their whole Royal whatever. We looked down on societies with autocracy. I never imagined that I'd be standing here with a guy on his knees calling me King, weeping that I agreed to do something as dumb as be his Head of State. But that's what monarchy was to some societies, it was a symbol, a pillar of history and culture. Bhutan's monarchy was only established in 1907, but the Bhutanese Kings could trace their history back to Jigme Namgyal who fought against the British, and then to Pema Lingpa, a Buddhist treasure revealer and saint. When the King and Queen, or whoever ran their Instagram accounts, posted pictures of the Royal Family and their kid for all the world to see, it was a way to link their people directly to the living reality which was a pillar of their cultural identity.

"You don't understand, Ajay. King Ajay." _fuck, I get to pick a new name, right? "King Ajay" sounds as wrong as King Tim or King Kevin, _"For so long… Pagan Min was our King. He was a conqueror. He came here with guns and bombs and… you don't understand what it is to have you. Here."

"I know," I said, "I know I can't understand."


	7. The Last Goddess

**Chapter 7**

_The Last Goddess_

Turns out half of the Golden Path was still supportive of Sabal. Rumors that Amita had been murdered circulated the country like wildfire. In that Himalayan way, the rumors became more variant and wild as time went on. Some say the Indian government murdered her. Some said the obvious, that it was the Royal Army that managed to get lucky finding her walking on the side of the road and got a lucky shot. But they probably didn't know it. Some said it was Sabal. I hadn't heard anyone say it might have been me, but well, I'm not sure anyone would say that to me.

Right now, we had a mission, though. I told Sabal to get things ready. Try to stay away from the Royal Remnant, I said – there was a big cell collecting in the City of Pain. I… had a plan for them. A plan I wasn't sure was going to work, but I was at least going to try.

In the meantime, I had someone to go find.

I decided that I was going to follow Sabal into this vow of nonviolence. That was going to be a _little _difficult. I was the King after all, and I was sure that not all of the Royal Remnant – I needed to stop thinking of them like that, I was Royalty now, they were the Insurgents – would go quietly into the night. But I learned all these skills, I could keep learning new ones.

I solicited Hurk onto this mission. He thought I was crazy carrying only the auto-crossbow and my decked out composite bow.

The buzzers didn't get as high as Durgesh. But we weren't small timers any more. We fucking run this country. Hurk was all too happy to help me figure out the helicopter. Apparently he flew one back when he was on some Pacific conflict zone.

"Ah'ight. Let's do this, motha'fucka."

He flew us close, and I slid down a rope onto a ledge. The ledge led directly to a gate and a prison cell. It might've been mine, actually. I wave Hurk away. He shouldn't stray too far, I'd still prefer he picked us up instead of me needing to grapple down this mountain with Bhadra strapped to my back. Assuming she was actually here.

The rumors said she was. I know that wasn't much to go off of, but Sabal and I had made a prioritized list. She was likely here, and if not here, then we'd start checking fortresses, especially ones with deep mountain caves and Amita supporters. I was a bit surprised to find the Royal Guards had left Durgesh. Maybe they thought the UN was going to come storming in and whoever got caught at the Kyrati Gulag was going to get a one-way-ticket to the Hague.

There was some irony that now two blue-shirt Golden Path soldiers were now keeping a _child political prisoner _in Durgesh now. As far as I know, Pagan Min never kept a child here. Not that I would put it past him.

The cell doors were all opened. I could only assume that Pagan's men had opened them on their way out. Nice of them, at least. I threw a rock down a stony corridor and waited to hear where the guards were hiding.

"Did you hear something?"

"Nah."

I was pretty sure I recognized them. How they didn't hear the helicopter flying overhead got me. Maybe they just assumed it was something rather ordinary. Amita solidifying her rule over Chiyul, the Valley of Death.

"I'm going to go take a look." I heard the shuffle of some boots and the clicking of a weapon as it was picked up into the guard's arms.

I crouched down and hid in a cell. I held my auto-crossbow up, getting ready to bust out a man's kneecaps. Theoretically I was King of Kyrat. I'd be more than happy to explain that the man was helping keep a _child political prisoner _for a would-be drug lord. Drug lady?

He passed, looking into the cells. Not very well. He looked into the cell I was in, but didn't turn all the way around to check the blind spot in the cell I was hiding in. I stepped forward and grabbed the barrel of his AK through the bars, and pointed my auto-cross at his face. Dumb. I know. Even if he screamed, I wouldn't have opened up his skull with a crossbow bolt.

"Don't scream. Let go of the rifle." I very calmly said.

He let go and lifted his hands up, _"Ajay?" _he whispered.

"Turn around." I put the AK against the cell wall, keeping the auto-cross trained on his body. I walked out of the cell, tied his hands with zip-ties and then shoved his golden headband into his mouth, "Trust me. You'll like living the rest of your life with knee caps."

I started heading down the hall, the auto-cross up and aimed downwards. At the end of the hall of cells that led to the open mountain air, there was a larger chamber more sheltered from the wind. There in the chamber was a Golden Path soldier sitting at a table. I could see Bhadra lying on a surprisingly nice bed on the far wall. The room was lit primarily with candles and butterlamps. There was a bookshelf. A cabinet full of dried foodstuffs, a table with a rice-cooker, and a rats-nest worth of wires that shot off towards a room I could only assume was housing a generator of some kind.

I walked calmly towards the room with the Golden Path guard and her child prisoner. I kept the auto-cross out and trained on her body. Bhadra saw me first, gasping.

When the guard looked up, she made to reach for the pistol at her side, "Don't." I said.

"Ajay?" Bhadra said, putting the book down.

"Turn around." I instructed the guard.

I could see her think about pulling out the gun. Funny. I killed a bunch of Royal Army guys next to her, listening to her scream joyously, _Pagan's reign is over! _Now I was holding a crossbow aimed at her face.

"Don't do it." I said, "I _will _shoot you."

She lifted her hands and turned around slowly. I walked up to her, keeping the auto-cross trained at the back of her knee until I had her wrist in my hand. I zip-tied her hands together, tossed her knife on the other side of the room and pushed her back into her seat.

"Amita ordered us here."

"Tell it to Nuremberg." I said, not sure if she would even understand, "Besides, she's dead."

"Amita… is dead?"

"She's dead?" Bhadra asked.

I put the auto-cross on the table and said, "Yes. She is. It's over."

"Who… who rules Kyrat?"

"Right now?" I sat down in a chair next to the bed where Bhadra's legs hung carefree over the sides, "Me."

"You?" Bhadra asked.

"_You?" _the guard asked.

"That's right. I met Sabal..."

"Sabal is dead," she spat from her zip-tied imprisonment, "_You _killed him, _too._"

"No. I lied." I said, "I let Sabal go."

"Amita ordered you to kill Sabal, so instead you let him live and killed her?" I could tell she was ready to call me a traitor. I suppose from a certain perspective I was.

"If you let me finish: I met Sabal. He was at Jalendu Temple, rebuilding it by hand. He uncovered the Tarun Matara records and it turns out my mother was a descendant of the Royal family. And with the Royal family being all dead..."

"… that makes you the King of Kyrat." Bhadra said, her eyes going wide, "Ajay! King Ajay!" she said excitedly, "I… I knew there was something special about you!"

"Bullshit." The guard said, "You're making shit up."

"My first order as King will be to have the documents authenticated," I said, "but thanks for the concern. Believe me, I'd love to leave this country to the wolves. But Pagan's dead. Amita's dead. Unless you want to let Sabal have his way, or some other Triad who hasn't managed to escape to Hong Kong yet to take control, it's me."

"King Ajay." Bhadra said, her lips curling into a smile. I realized that the name sounded stupid. I would have to pick a different one for a regnal title.

"Let's talk about you," I said, "Amita put you here because she didn't want you to be a rallying point for Sabal's followers. Or Sabal himself, I should say."

"Yes… I know." Bhadra said, "I mean… I know she needed me out of the way. It's terrible. She was like a big sister to me for so long."

"I'm sorry about that." I certainly knew how the war turned family members into monsters, "But I guess my question to you for the future is: do you want to be Tarun Matara?"

She looked off into space, and then over at the guard, and then to me, "I guess." She laughed nervously, "I never really thought of it as being something I wanted. It's just what is."

"Well, if you don't want to be Tarun Matara… we can change that. Together. We're _the Two Pillars of Kyrati Tradition _according to Sabal. But I'm going to do my best to make being King a force for good, and for making Kyrat a modern country."

"But how do I do that for Tarun Matara?"

"Well, I've asked a couple people. And they said that Tarun Matara's get a little lost after the goddess leaves them," a euphemism I was pretty uncomfortable with, "That Kyrati society isn't very kind to them. So I had a thought: I'll set up a Royal Scholarship for Tarun Matara's to have an opportunity to travel abroad, maybe to India or America..."

"Or Britain?"

"Or maybe Britain, and you can have some space and time, and get an education that you wouldn't get as Tarun Matara."

"But we do get educated. We have sadhus, and monks, and some nuns to teach us."

"Is that what you want?"

She put her finger to her chin, "I want to learn about animals. I'm really interested in science. I want to see the ocean. I don't know, there's a big world out there. Living in the Temple walls learning nothing but _puja _and _mantra _isn't how I want to spend my life."

"You're Tarun Matara. You won't spend your _life _doing it. Just until you're, what thirteen or something." The guard helpfully pointed out, "Then they throw you out like trash."

"Well not any more. Not any future Tarun Matara's either. I don't know if I can promise Britain. I'll need a couple accountants to tell me how much money is in the budget, but at the very least, we can send you to India, or Bhutan, or something. And future Tarun Matara's can have that opportunity, too."

"I think the ceremony should change, too." Bhadra said.

"What do you mean?"

"When Tarun Matara is enthroned, Hindu Sadhus and Buddhist Monks preside over the ceremony. I think it shouldn't be men."

"Who should it be?" I wasn't aware there were female sadhus.

"Sannyasini and Anis." She said, my Kyrati good enough that I could infer she meant Hindu priestesses and Buddhist nuns, "It's enthroning the goddess. The women should be in charge."

I found it hard to deny her logic. Even if I wanted to, which I didn't. It was certainly a way to push Kyrat into the future.

"Huh..." the guard said, not moving as vigorously against her restraints as before, "Maybe you have some ideas, after all."


	8. My Land

**Chapter 8**

_My Land_

To his credit, Sabal's extended trip through Nepal and India was vastly shortened. And he recruited enough holy men and women that Pagan had chased out of the country who immediately found their way to that island in the middle of a Kyrati lake where Jalendu sat. The Buddhists and Hindus (and more than a couple Christians, I was surprised to discover) didn't seek to recreate a completed version of the Temple (I had already been given files on architects from Bhutan and India that I planned on commissioning to rebuild a new temple over the old one) but an environment that was workable for Bhadra's enthronement.

Farther north, I had decided that the Royal Fortress and the Royal Palace would not be reserved for me or my family. I really didn't need something so ostentatious. The Royal Palace, I christened the new Parliament building (_Tshogdu_ was it's common Tibetan name, and _Sansada_ was it's Nepali name, but I couldn't not call it Parliament. Apparently "Congress" was normal for an American Citizen like me, but the name was quite charged on this site of the Himalayas). The Royal Fortress was for the rest of the government offices: Bureaus of Labor, Agriculture, Tourism, and Infrastructure, the Office of the Army, the Courts of Justice, the Finance Bureau, etc. etc.

Setting up a government was _hard_. Thankfully Kyrat was small, and "setting up a government" involved mainly finding people who had this job before Pagan showed up, or deputizing a local who was taking care of the job anyway.

Mr. Chiffon was one of the exiles who returned to Kyrat with all of those painted and robed holy people. He was his usual eccentric self, and I gave him the assignment: make me a coronation outfit. One that honors Kyrat's legacy and culture, "But keep it _classy_. _Demure_."

"Demure?" he said, "That I can do."

I have to admit that I expected I would need to at least edit his design several times. But I didn't. He sources materials from both the Pacchim Valley and the northern Uttar half. I wasn't quite sure about the purple coloring, but he insisted that it was a union of red (Royal) and blue (Golden Path), and more importantly, the color of royalty. On my robe's lapel I wore a pin with the Ghale crest flanked by a tiger and an elephant, and a pair of crossed khukri's for the Golden Path. As an American it felt weird that the GP was to be represented politically even as the leader of a now (theoretically at least) united country. But Mr. Chiffon quickly reminded me that the Taiwanese flag explicitly referenced the KMT, and Panama's flag was an explicit reference to peace between two political factions. Maybe we'd change it later, but I took that inspiration and had Mr. Chiffon change the design of the Kyrati flag with a pair of crossed khukris to replace the AK-47s. Symbols of war and the GP aside, the khukri was at least a symbol of the Himalayas and a symbol of Kyrat.

I looked in the mirror. _I _was a symbol of Kyrat now. I looked Kyrati, that was for sure. When I turned around, I saw Mr. Chiffon and Tara.

"How do I look?" I asked her.

Tara was in a traditional Uttar outfit: a tightly wrapped _kira _skirt and a golden-colored _tdego _jacket over it. I found my mother's collection of _gzi _cat's-eye necklaces and offered her the biggest one. To use a cliché, she cleans up nice. Her hair was let down. A single braid framed the left side of her face and a pair of red and blue beads clinked quietly as she moved, "Shockingly hot."

I tried imagining that it wasn't because I was now King of Kyrat. It was one thing when we were hooking up after drug-fueled blood fests in the Arena. But now I was supposed to be Royalty. Wasn't I?

"Thanks?"

"She's right," Mr. Chiffon said, "You look _exquisite." _

"Well..." I turned back to the mirror, "I guess that's as good as it's gonna get."

There was a knock at the door, "Ya'll around?"

"Come in, Hurk." I said.

"Ya'll ready? I'm gettin' the green light from Sabal."

"Yeah, we're ready." I said. The four of us left the Ghale homestead and walked out to the helicopter. We climbed in as Hurk took off into the blue, chopping through the air, over the snow-capped peaks and down towards Jalendu Temple.

Every Kyrati in the country must have been here. I'm positive most of the Royal Remnant was there in the crowd just to watch instead of taking over all of the empty outposts, towers, and cities. They were here. Hurk, dressed in a jacket and tie, his hair slicked back like he was attending his sister's wedding in downtown San Diego, landed the chopper at the east end of the Temple island. The four of us exited and were immediately led by a young monk to our spots at the front of the ceremonial audience.

I took a look around the lake. The crowd was massive. In every direction. In front of me and my entourage of Hurk, Tara, and Mr. Chiffon was Sabal and a small group of Buddhist monks and Hindu sadhus. I recognized them as former Golden Path warriors. Sabal looked a bit odd. He was wearing colorful pants and a green shirt and one of those popular white felt hats. Apparently Mr. Chiffon was interested in having him wear the Warrior chic that he had me murder a bunch of animals for (I kept a note to ask him why he needed that elephant hide to be burned while still on the crazed elephant). He wanted _someone _to wear it. He spent all that time working on it. But to Sabal's credit, he took his new vow of non-violence _extremely _seriously. And insisted that he wasn't going to wear garments made from animal skins. I later assured Mr. Chiffon that I would find _someone _to wear it. Maybe we wouldn't use these kinds of rare materials, but I suppose the uniform of the new Kyrati Army would need redesigning. I couldn't imagine another Kyrati designer up to the task.

Sabal greeted us, "The ceremony will start in a few minutes, my King."

I nodded my approval. Sabal moved on and walked away with his monks and mystics who all nodded to me with reverence in return. Some of them saw Tara standing next to me and blushed.

Tara smiled, repressing a laugh, "Don't worry," she said, noticing that I saw.

Then the monks blasted horns at the four corners of Jalendu Island. The sound, made from the femurs of dead Lamas, rang through the countryside, echoing off the sides of the mountains and trees. They probably heard it in Banapur.

When it was over, they took a pause and blasted them again. In between the blasts, it was so quiet, the people so expectant, that he swore he could hear the people on the other side of the lake crying tears of joy.

Then the sadhus stepped forward on the stairs towards what was left of the Temple. Four of them carried Bhadra on a palanquin. As Tarun Matara, she was not allowed to touch the ground. First because the goddess might leave her. Secondly, because she might trip and fall and if she got cut or scraped or if a single drop of blood left her body, then the goddess would _definitely _leave her. So she stayed obediently on the palanquin. I'm sure it gave all of her believers mild anxiety that she spent so much time and so long unthroned and unprotected by the watchful eyes of holy men.

The Sadhus themselves were dressed, well "dressed," like yogis: they wore very little except loin cloths. Their bodies were covered in ash and colored powder. The first had a white chalk-mark above his head. One line and one dot. The second had two horizontal lines with a dot above and a dot below. The third had three lines and a triangular placement of the dots. The fourth had two full lines, and two bent lines, with the four dots on his forehead meeting the four ordinal directions. Bhadra had on a robe that was far too big for her, even at this late age of Tarun Matara enthronement (I assumed it served a secondary purpose of cushioning any accidental falls). It was bright red silk, with golden marks representing immortality and impermanence, two symbols in an eternal dance that I had yet to figure out.

The Sadhus chanted as they walked, bringing her up to the throne where a dozen Buddhist monks waited. The ground was covered with red cloth. Monks had spent a ludicrous amount of time smoothing the cloth (and sweeping the ground underneath as well) to make sure it was absolutely wrinkle and crease free. Upon arriving there, the Sadhus gently placed the palanquin down then quickly bowed with their heads and hands pointed towards Bhadra at the center of the palanquin. Bhadra stood and walked casually to the throne, which was really just a raised wooden platform, painted in the classical Himalayan style with the eight lucky signs drawn and painted colorfully around it.

Bhadra was the oldest Tarun Matara ever historically seated (Kyra counts neither as a Queen nor a Tarun Matara in any reasonable history book). Normally a Sadhu would hold the girl's hand (around age four or five) and lead her to the throne, where he would pass her hand to a Buddhist monk. Around the 1300s, the Buddhist faction of Kyrati society wanted in on Tarun Matara selection and after some… nastiness, this was the compromise ceremony that resulted. Some changes here and there, but basically unchanged since 1356. When the Chiefs of Utkarsh wanted the right to conquer Chiyul, they had to achieve the legitimacy and authority of the Tarun Matara. When my ancestors wanted to become the Kings of Kyrat, each one had to consult the Tarun Matara, essentially a little girl, for the right to ascend (or take) the throne. When the British wanted access to Kyrat, who did they have to ask for permission? Yes, the King, obviously, but they were pretty perplexed at being told they should consult with a little girl before he would grant them any kind of access.

Bhadra wasn't a little girl. She was the last of the old Tarun Matara's at the mercy of monks and Sadhus. And she was the first of the new, a woman who embodied both Kyrat's semi-mythical past, and the progress and hope for the future.

She shot me a look as the top monk set a crown with five Dakinis on her head. If the ceremony allowed for her to deliver a speech, she'd give it here. She even told me what she'd say,

_I am honored to embody this tradition of our great nation and people. I am happy to personify the hopes and dreams of our ancestors, and all of our fallen brothers and sisters. I am also saddened, that we cling so tightly to the mistakes of the past, just because they are bound to the heart of our culture that we hold so dear. The tradition of Tarun Matara is one of our great cultural treasures, a link to our past that has given Kyratis all around the world hope for the future, but it has also served as a golden chain to the girls who are embodied by the goddess, and the women whom she leaves behind. I will be the last Tarun Matara located and determined by men. From now on, the Tarun Matara will be located by Sannyasini and crowned and educated by Gelongma… _

She was a bright kid. Who had a bright future.

* * *

Her time as Tarun Matara was not a particularly easy one since she had such a short time to get a lot of things done. The Sadhus (naturally) pushed back against her insistence that the next Tarun Matara would be determined by a committee of female Hindu monastics. This involved reconstructing the Sleeping Sisters (my bad) with an entirely female crew. That took a long time. Well over a decade until it was completely finished. That said, I was happy to grant it to a Female Monastic Community, at Bhadra's insistence. Well before the last stones were put in place, it was functioning as a nunnery for Hindu women who felt spiritual calling.

It was this committee that Bhadra then worked with after the goddess had "left" her to locate and enthrone her successor. After that was done, I basically issued Bhadra a blank check to go wherever she wanted in the world. Access wasn't an issue. Anywhere in the world was going to be excited to claim the former goddess of Kyrat as an alumnus.

Turns out she was enticed by a boarding school in the United Kingdom. I had the Kyrati ambassador haggle a bit over the price tag before writing the check and sending her on her way. We corresponded, and I have to say, I started to feel like a doting uncle watching her grow up from afar. When she returned to Kyrat for annual visits, she was still adored. Turns out being a symbol of freedom for so many people surpassed the Tarun Matara's post-goddess traditional role of being an obscure woman with no education and no knowledge about how to operate in normal society. People in Kyrat were overjoyed to see her.

She stayed in England for some time. She applied and was accepted to study in Oxford all on her own. Sans Royal support, which was on budgetary fight I didn't even need to swat away. She went on to study law and international relations. And well, got ready to come back for a much longer and brighter career in Kyrat than most Kyrati women were used to thinking about.


	9. My People

**Chapter 9**

_My People_

The Sadhus picked up Bhadra in the palanquin again and brought her to the edge of the water. There was a boat there waiting specially for her. This whole part of the ceremony was new because, well, in all of Kyrat's history, there had never been simultaneous enthronements of a Tarun Matara and a Monarch. First time for everything, I suppose.

I was led, somewhat awkwardly I might say, to my own boat where I was seated with Hurk, Tara, and even Sabal and we were driven in a wide arc to an area with a bunch of soldiers in Golden Path blue-and-gold uniforms. There a female Golden Path soldier opened the doors for Tara and I and we sat in the back of a jeep. The hood, I noticed, was painted over the crossed khukris with a golden crown. Sabal got in the front to drive, and got in the side seat, picking up a high-powered rifle along the way. The Golden Path soldiers followed behind us, with two turret-trucks following right behind the Royal SUV. I felt only slightly embarrassed. Especially at the lax security. At least _one _of them should be in front of us. If not for myself, then just to save face, I'd need to let the security guys know for the future.

We drove entirely clear roads. Kyratis on either side craned their necks and threw flowers. Shouting, too fast for me to catch, filled the air. As we approached the Royal Fortress, they switched from flowers to colored powders. Frankly, I was surprised that not a single group of Pagan Min's guys tried anything. I half-expected a rocket to come flying out of the mountains and hit the caravan, or for a few roving Pagan's Wrath guys to come swerving into the crowds and open fire on the Tarun Matara (or some Amita loyalists for that matter). But nothing happened. If there were former Pagan or Amita loyalists in the crowd, they kept quiet.

Tara did, too, but she leaned towards me at one point and said, "You've got your speech?"

I nodded. I was a warrior, not a king, and definitely not a public speaker. But then the jeep parked, and the turrets behind us. When I got out, I waved Sabal on and told the turrets to follow him. I really didn't want the pictures of my speech and the new Kyrat to be declared with heavy machine guns next to me.

There was a small line of chairs laid out behind a podium with the Kyrati seal emblazoned on it: a victory banner topped with a crown, with crossed khukris underneath, flanked by a lion and a tiger. I sat in the left-most chair. Tara sat next to me before asking if I wanted her there, or if she should stay somewhere out of sight. I motioned that she should sit down, still unable to say much. As if sensing I had this problem, she produced a bottle of water out of seemingly nowhere and I took a deep drink. Hurk was there. The rifle gone, but I could tell that he had his Desert Eagle strapped underneath his jacket. He stood just behind the chairs, with a vantage point of the crowd that was assembling in the Fortress courtyard.

The other major guests had arrived as well. Sabal came, in his decidedly un-Sabal outfit. Sharma Salsa and Ravi Ray Rana, I made sure to invite as well. And I reserved a seat for Mr. Chiffon. Across from me, on the other platform I had them set up a small pavilion for the Tarun Matara and her religious supporters: Buddhist and Hindu clergy sat around and attended her as they all patiently waited for the speeches to begin. I would have preferred Bhadra to sit over here with us, but I was to be King, and wanted to send a signal that Kyrat was not going to be a theocracy.

That couldn't be _entirely _avoided as I learned a couple days ago, but at least visually, I wanted the appearance of a separation of church and state.

The crowds had arrived. The reporters had all come with their cameras and recorders. Live streams had been turned on. Ravi Ray had made sure one of his friends was reporting and commenting live on the events. And well, I guess it was time for the show to begin.

Sabal turned to me and said, "With your approval, _mero Raja." _

I nodded. Disapproving silently of the title.

Sabal stood up and approached the podium. He tapped the microphone once, switched it on, and then tapped it again, so that his hand gesture was messaged to the world. He spoke in the Kyrati-dialect of Nepali and I caught the basic gist of it:

"Fellow Kyratis: for years we have struggled. First against each other for the destiny of our nation. And in that chaos and anger a rakshasa from the east came to our troubled Shangri-la to devour our dead. For so long. For so many of our dead. For so many of the lost time and energy our people have had to endure, I must take the moment to declare victory. Victory over Pagan Min! Victory over the Triads! Victory for Kyrat! Never again will our people be forced to bow to a demon despot. Never again will we cower in fear in our own home. Long live Kyrat!"

And at that, as Sabal raised his arms high, the crowd below, and all across Kyrat probably, followed his shout: "_Kyrat zindabad!" _

He continued: "But while the darkest moments are over, we are only at the dawn of a new era. Challenges approach, for which I have the most confidence and faith in our new monarch, in our new government, in our new people, reborn from the ashes of decades of civil war, having followed a golden path into a future..."

My mind wandered. I could only think of my parents, the ones who started the Golden Path only to be torn to shreds by the conflict that they tried so hard not to be consumed by.

"Ajay?" I looked up. Sabal was pointing towards me so that I may approach the podium. It wasn't time for my speech quite yet. But I approached, standing slightly to the right so the people could all see me. It was then that the Tarun Matara picked up a crown made up of five slats showing Kyra, Banashur, Kalinag, and the Sleeping Saints and walked down from the pavilion, across the road, and up to where I was standing on the other platform. As she walked, the Sadhus and monks blanketed the ground in flower petals to prevent even a cell of her body from touching a molecule of earth. When she was within arm's reach of me, I bent down on one knee like I had imagined King Arthur knelt in front of Merlin, or some other cliché from a movie about knights that might make Sharma proud, and Bhadra placed the crown on my head, moving it slightly from side to side just to make sure it fit snugly. Even as I stood and faced the raucously cheering crowd, I was worried the crown would fall off and announce an ominous omen to my reign.

But it didn't. The people cheered. And cheered. And cheered. I saw some elderly Kyratis in the front of the crowd starting to cry. Even some of the Golden Path guards who stood along the walls with their AKs had trouble keeping their chill. Some people in the crowd started up another chant of "Kyrat zindabad!" which soon drowned out the other cheers and the Kyratis eventually tired of it.

I had to remind myself that it wasn't me. Not that I felt particularly ego-driven in that moment, rather that I felt somewhat silly. They were cheering because a girl in a fancy costume put a hat on my head. But I embodied their hopes, their dreams, a restoration of their broken families, which were only metaphors in the long run for their broken nation. I was so much more than myself and the responsibility weighed on my shoulders as well as my head.

I approached the podium and deftly pulled out the wrinkled sheet of paper that held my speech and put it on the desk. The crowd quickly quieted to a whisper and waited expectantly for me to say something.

First I just took off the crown and set it aside.

"My fellow Kyratis. Today, by accepting this title of royalty, I effectively abandon my American citizenship. Article I, Section 9 of the United States Constitution states that, simply, I cannot receive a title of nobility, and maintain my status as an America. Yet, though I accept this crown, this title, and the responsibility both contain, I cannot be fully Kyrati, either. I regret that I can only give this speech in English, my native tongue, but am at least proud I can sit and drink _chang _in Utkarsh while cracking jokes in Kyrati. For years I lived in the United States, protected by my mother from the violence and unrest present in the Motherland. I lived as a Kyrati-American, a small group of refugees from our poor, war-torn land. I never abandoned the spirit of Kyrat. Couldn't if I tried. And I realized, only recently, that my mother, a former Tarun Matara, had intended the whole time to prepare me in a mindspace of war and the culture of our mountains and people, knowing that one day I would need to return for the benefit of our people. The seeds of being a Kyrati were in me when I was born in this land, and nurtured carefully as a secret plant in the garden of who Ajay Ghale was. And only recently have those plants been allowed to grow beyond the garden walls and take over.

"I could never abandon my Kyrati-ness as an American. But having lived there for most of my life, as your King, I cannot abandon my American-ness. It is somewhat abhorrent to me to accept a crown, and I do so only as a responsibility to my country, and my people. It is my greatest wish as an American-Kyrati, and my first Royal Decree as the King of Kyrat, that a democratic-republic style government be formed, complete with the power to unseat, replace, or even abolish the monarch if the time should come for it. It is my hope and wish that all of my successors will rule with restraint, justice, and hesitation, being only well-educated and well-meaning guides to ensure stability in times of crisis and in terms where justice is called for. And if one of them should prove to be more Pagan Min and less Queen Kyra, it is my fervent wish and desire that the future Kyrati legislature will be empowered to remove him or her from office peacefully.

"Kyrat's traditions are what make her special, and separate her from those Asian nations that have abandoned their spirits in favor of modern societies. Yet, some modernity is necessary. I have been correctly criticized as being a child raised in the First World only to journey back to a country where I have a modicum of historic and ethnic ties to be raised as King. And I can promise that there are some benefits to modernity – modern medicine, a legislature that empowers rights and liberty for all, an economy that can regulate big corporations in favor of the small businesses of the people – that I hope to bring to Kyrat, but only in ways that benefit the people. The diseases of modernity – sometimes quite literally – are legion, and should be treated as serious issues that can threaten the mental, spiritual, and economic security of our people. Asian countries like South Korean, Taiwan, Singapore, and Hong Kong are all often the first to be mentioned when it comes to powerful strong men who wrangle disparate elements into place, have a raised economy, and then achieve a generally strong democracy. Except that each of these countries was characterized not just by strong men and Fascist dictators for decades, but by human rights abuses. Hong Kong, one of the last bastions of freedom in the People's Republic, let's not forget, was also the home of Pagan Min and Yuma. And they did not flee because the law was on their tail to bring them to justice, but because wars between rival Triads forced them out.

"These are the fates Kyrat must avoid: to fall into another central-Asian drug plantation, watched constantly by law enforcement across the world for being a zone where violence is equated with strength, or to be like Tibet, forsaking the outside world in favor of traditions and systems that grow increasingly stale and outmoded, until modernity crashes through the door without or consent or approval, and to the detriment of all.

"I am beyond honored and humbled to be chosen as the man to guide Kyrat along that knife's edge into a future that I do not claim will be a utopia, but will be a Kyrat of freedom, justice, and acceptance for all. I have chosen not to use my birth name as my regnal name, but to be crowned as King Kalinag the First. Not because I see myself as the hero that Kyrat needs in our long hours of darkness, but because, as I have come to realize, that Kalinag is each of us, and I hope to inspire with my reign, my name, and my time, as both Ajay Ghale and Kalinag I, to a brave and hardy folk a future worth fighting for. May my successors and descendants never forget that this is our greatest duty: to the people of Kyrat."

I had more, and I intended to keep going, but the crowd exploded into cheers. I have no idea how much got through to them. English was pretty good in Kyrat, but I felt like I had babbled. I wondered how much of it was just that they were happy to have a King, and one who would address them in ways that weren't patronizing or self-serving. They died down, seeing that I was still standing there next to the crown on the podium.

"Before I leave, I'd like to announce the first of my Royal Decrees. First: I am discussing with a commission of Kyrati scholars and political exiles of which constitutional scholars to invite from abroad who will be invaluable consultants in the creation of a new Kyrati Constitution, which I hope to complete in less than two years. In the meantime, another commission is being set up to organize Kyrat into voting districts and a basic legislature set up for the interim.

"Second: I am offering blanket amnesty to followers of Pagan Min, or Amita, who are out there, still clinging to their visions of a dictatorship led by a heroin-fueled despot. The time for that vision is over. Turn yourself in, offer your statement, and I promise that justice, and in this case, meaning that consideration of those of us pushed into impossible circumstances, will take place. The Kyrat that approaches will need all the help it can get: regardless of the past.

"Finally: I am a simple man. The Ghale Homestead is all I need for a palace. The Royal Fortress is to be reserved for all of the offices of government and bureaucracy, and the former Royal Palace will serve as the new Parliament building.

"Let this be the beginning of a new Kyrat."

And I remembered one last thing.

"_Kyrat zindabad!" _

And of course, the crowd went nuts.


	10. It's Good to be the King

**Chapter 10**

_It's Good to be the King_

I invited Bhadra over to the Palace that evening. It was weird to think of my parent's house as a "Palace." But that's apparently what it was now. The head Monk, Tshawa Rinpoche, made sure to remind me that Bhadra must not touch the earth, otherwise the goddess might leave her body prematurely. Oy. But then I realized that he wasn't going to refuse the King, just tried to protect the precious institution of the Tarun Matara. And while it was going to be a bunch of us letting off steam, drinking, and celebrating a new era, I felt like it would be a good day for Bhadra to enjoy being a human and not a goddess before her training became a 24/7 thing.

They agreed and when she showed up in her full regalia, I presented her and Tshawa Rinpoche with the interior of the Palace. The floor was covered entirely by carpets and blankets, and after carrying her in a Palanquin inside, I dismissed the Rinpoche and his attendants, and then the other guests arrived. Hurk came first. Yogi and Reggie, of course, never left and were here hanging out, half-high already (well, half-high for their standards). Mr. Chiffon showed up, carrying a bottle of very expensive liquor. I asked Ravi Ray and Sharma if they wanted to come, and I was surprised to hear them actually decline. Soon after Tara and a few of her friends showed up, dressed to the nines in gorgeous traditional Kyrati dress, Hurk pulled out a lap top and we saw that Sharma and Ravi declined because they were driving around Kyrat (Sharma took the north, Ravi the south) to film the celebrations around Kyrat and live stream most of it. It was pretty obvious that Ravi Ray and Sharma were working together on an endeavor to start a political movement of their own. They weren't subtle about it. In both English and Kyrati, they interviewed celebrants about their hopes, dreams, and wishes for the future of Kyrat. And they almost always picked young, lively, and western-dressed people for their brief interviews. Sure enough my suspicions were confirmed, Ravi Ray and Sharma announced the creation of the Progessive Party of Kyrat (PPK) as well as their own candidacies for office first thing in the morning. They had YouTube all figured out, and Sharma promoted Progressive Golden Path fighters and their vision for a Kyrat that was on par with the most progressive democracies of Asia, while Ravi Ray turned Radio Free Kyrat into a Progressive Radio Station, doing away with talks about a pyramid and using Pagan Min's followers for slave labor.

"What'cha think, Ajay?" Hurk asked.

"Well, I assumed that was going to happen one day soon. I assume Sabal is doing his own campaign right now, but instead of live streaming it, he's going around to the Temples and Monasteries and talking to a more demure crowd."

"What about Shanath?" Niura, one of Tara's friends asked, "That crowd is certainly not demure."

"But I bet Sabal will be all over it." Tara nodded.

The notion of Sabal and the Arena was a new one I hadn't thought much of. But it was one of Kyrat's great landmarks and was started by Royal decree in the 18th Century by King Avinash. Yeah, Sabal would probably have been a fan of the Arena before I swore him to a life of non-violence.

"You know, I never thought of it like that," I said, "But actually, yeah, I could see Sabal campaigning around Shanath for his party."

There was a big plate of food on the table. Hurk cooked southern-style ribs and burgers. Tara, Niura, and Prana brought the supplies to make traditional Kyrati foods. Soon there was a grill going on the front porch, a steamer making momos, and a rice cooker and pot preparing Kyrati red-rice and dahl.

"Your Highness, if I might offer a toast before the meal is served?" Mr. Chiffon asked.

"I'd be more than happy." I said.

Bhadra looked at the expensive bottle, her eyes wide, "Is it… alcohol?"

"You can take a small bit." Mr. Chiffon said, "Just don't tell the monks." He poured her a third of a shot.

The rest of us took a shot of the whiskey in our hands.

Yogi whipped out a fat blunt and said, "Ah, but she probably shouldn't have any of this. And I promise you, this pairs nicely with a fine whiskey."

Hurk eagerly took his glass, and the Shanathi girls stared at it like it was liquid gold. Reggie took the glass but stared longingly at the blunt that Yogi held prepared.

"If I may: to the future of Kyrat." He raised the glass high.

The rest of us then raised our glasses and repeated, "To the future of Kyrat!" And we drank.

Bhadra coughed and twisted her face, "Blech! You all drink that for fun?"

"You'll end up liking it as you get older," Mr. Chiffon said, "Once your life is no longer ruled by monks."

Yogi lit up his spliff and took a deep drag before handing it to Reggie.

Reggie shook his head, "Where's your manners, you wanker? We're in the presence of _Royalty._" Reggie held out the blunt towards me.

I briefly considered not taking it, but then I realized I was the king, and this was my house. And I could probably declare cannabis legal with a single stroke of my pen with zero backlash. I took the blunt and inhaled before passing it to the ladies.

"You're gonna keep our favorite herb legal in Kyrat, right?" Yogi asked.

"I mean, it grows wild here." I said, thinking off the cuff, "I don't see why we can't make an industry out of it and start exporting it perfectly legally to places that want some Himalayan variety."

"It's legal in half the states, right?"

"No. Far less than half. But there's a huge market in California we could probably make a deal with. In Canada it's completely legal." Reggie seemed like he was ready to start listing the laws in every country, "Now the Netherlands, it's culturally legal, but not actually. You can smoke and sell and do basically whatever you want, but I doubt you could import it there."

"Either way," Hurk said, "Better for the country than heroin. Hell, most of the states have some provision for medical mary jay." He entered the room carrying a big tray full of meats.

"I was thinking we could keep some of the opium fields regardless, maybe talk to one of the more ethical pharmaceutical companies. I'm not banking on it, though." It was weird to think this way, trying to determine the future of the country based on my own ethical considerations. I suppose when it was – and I use this term lightly – _my _country, that was an important consideration.

"What about the Arena?" Prana asked, "Are you going to keep it open?"

_Fuck_, _I hadn't even considered that_, "I… I don't know."

"It's blood sport," Mr. Chiffon said, "Not very civilized," as Niura served a helping of rice and poured a ladle-full of dahl on top of it. Hurk followed, tonging a couple ribs onto his place.

"I suppose it is…" I had agree with Sabal not to trample on Kyrat's traditions. And as far as traditions go, this was a pretty new one. But it was… to use a problematic term, barbaric, "I think I can get away by banning live animals. The Kyrati rhino is luckily not endangered, but I imagine that it's probably best if we try to keep it that way. Then we can try to progress to a system that uses mostly non-lethal weapons and only registered applicants that can fight in the Arena."

"There's precedence for it. See what's been going on in Spain with bullfighting." Reggie said.

"I'm not sure that's a great example," Mr. Chiffon pointed out, "They're having a lot of trouble banning that practice."

"Maybe that's a great example of the push back you can expect to receive," Yogi said, "Mind if I have another sip of that fine whiskey of yours Mr. Chiffon?"

"My pleasure, Mr..."

"Yogi." He said, keeping Reggie at bay, "You can call my Yogi."

"Well, I'll be happy for keeping a job," Tara said.

"You're going to stay at the Arena?" I asked, a bit surprised. I could tell that everyone heard my surprised tone, and of course, everyone saw us together at the coronations.

"Well, what else am I going to do? What else are the rest of us going to do?"

I shrugged, "Run for office?"

Niura and Prana laughed. Tara didn't.

"Run for office?" Niura said.

"Sure. Why not?"

"I don't think most of us are cut out for it." Prana added, "Most Kyratis still don't know much about democracy anyway. Including most of us."

"And besides, what if we lose? Then what do we do anyway?"

"There's going to be a lot of work in the new Kyrat," I said, barely cognizant that I was actually saying it, "There's government jobs that aren't dependent on votes. There's going to be lots of permit offices and passport control stations. Schools need to be set up, teachers hired. Kyrat is prime for a roaring tourist economy and there will need to be hotel managers, bed and breakfast operators, restauranteurs to give a taste of the real Kyrat. Tour guides. Tour companies and people to run them. If we do have a thriving medical marijuana industry, we're going to need exporters, managers, business consultants, translators. There's a whole lot of work to do in the new Kyrat."

"And in the new Arena, there will still need to be people making sure those rules are being followed." Niura said, getting in on the train.

"That, too." I laughed, "See?"

"But some of us aren't… educated. We can't read government permit applications, or teach others."

"Well, I'm hoping we can start childhood education early. We'll need teachers for young children, too. Which..." and as I was saying it, I noticed how sad she looked, "Well, I'm going to open an office for adult education anyway. Can't have much of a modern economy with a literacy rate below 50%."

"I think it's a wonderful aspiration, your Highness."

"Mr. Chiffon," I said, "You don't have to call me that. Especially not here in my own house."

"Very well, then please, King Kalinag, refer to me as Mumu."

"At least call me Ajay."

"Very well, I do think it is an excellent aspiration, Ajay. A modern country with a modern economy. And one that supports the arts, the traditions… a world that's a fusion of old and new."

"I love the cadence of this man's voice..." Yogi said, taking another long drag of the herb.

"I think it's great, too," Bhadra said, picking a couple momos up on her plate, "It's like our dinner here. Western and eastern. Old and new. We learn from the past, and we learn from the present."

"Well said, Tarun Matara." Prana said.

"Bhadra," she said

"Well said, Tarun Matara Bhadra," Prana corrected herself.

There was more discussion of policy. Yogi floated the idea of legalizing homosexuality (which had been criminalized based off a British statute in the 19th Century, though rarely enforced), and I told him "Obviously, discrimination won't be allowed in Kyrat based on race, ethnicity, religion, gender, or sexuality under my reign."

"Or caste." Mr. Chiffon reminded me that this was still something that popped up among Kyratis.

"Or caste."

It was Reggie who brought up the National Health Service in the UK and implied that Kyrat should try something similar, but Hurk, ever the policy pragmatist, asked how Kyrat might be paying for something like that, _and _all of the education programs I was hoping to implement, _and _keep the government functioning by paying bureaucrats, and I had to admit he had a good point. Kyrat wasn't sitting atop piles of money.

But as the night progressed, the problems all seemed so small and far away. The worst was over and behind us. The discussion was no longer how we should survive against a murderer that had somehow gotten in charge of all of the guns, but how to build a future for our people. How we were all shooting in one direction together.

Already letters had been sent off to Amnesty International to inspect Durgesh Prison. And I handed Sabal – who would soon be officially the Commissioner of Kyrati Religious Affairs – an order to turn Durgesh from a gulag into a war memorial to commemorate the dead, a modern shrine for Kyrat's religious and secular people to honor the sacrifice they all made for our freedoms. I announced these plans to the dinner table. Bhadra and Hurk were both excited. Mr. Chiffon and Yogi at that point were sitting next to each other passing a joint between them and pouring each other shots.

We were all stuffed and had abandoned talk of policy, now we were jabbering about our own hopes and dreams and wishes for a new Kyrat. Reggie was telling Bhadra and Niura about his journeys around the world with Yogi – their adventures in Nepal and India, the long stays in the jungles in Thailand, trekking through Borneo, the wilds of Amsterdam and Geneva, adventures smoking the herb in the Spanish Pyrenees, and on the beaches of the Azores.

Hurk and Prana were doing their very best not to strip naked while the hefty American put some meat in the Kyrati's mouth. (I wasn't sure how they could still eat, I was _stuffed_. And Hurk's ribs were as incredible as Niura's dumplings.)

Tara leaned over next to me, a blunt in her hand and said, "Wanna get some fresh air for a bit?"

I nodded and followed her outside. When I looked back at the gathering, a smile on my face, I saw Yogi and Mumu were already nibbling at each others lips. I leaned over to Reggie, regaling his audience with another story about being thrown out of a Bogota nightclub, "Hey… maybe let those two know that there's an air mattress in your tent." Reggie looked over at his buddy and the Kyrati fashionista starting to feel each other up (in my parent's house, in the presence of a minor, I might add) and gave them a nudge. I was happy that they then got up, rather conspicuously, and made it out the back door on their way to the tent.

Tara and I went out the front door and stood looking out over Kyrat. Blue and gold and red and pink explosions burst out over the dark landscape, lighting it up like a dream of Shangri-la.

"It's beautiful isn't it?" She asked, handing me the joint.

I took a deep inhale, "Yeah… I never thought I'd see Kyrat like this."

"Well, it's all because of you." She said.

"I didn't do it alone."

"You almost did."

"I guess I helped." I passed her back the herb.

"And now that you're a big shot, a King, you're going to need a Queen, right?"

"Yeah… I suppose I am." I said, knowing that it was coming sooner or later, "You up for the job?"

"Do I need to apply?"

"I mean, I'm sure there's going to be speculation given that we were sitting next to each other basically all day."

She laughed, "And that's what we're going by nowadays? Speculation?"

"I don't know," I said, "Maybe… maybe we start off slow."

"Don't you think we're past that?" she laughed, handing me back the joint.

"Yeah. I suppose we are. I guess, I meant something like we could publicly court a bit more. Give the people a bit of a classic national romance. Something like they had in Bhutan or in England."

"I didn't peg you for a romantic, Ajay Ghale. Sorry, I meant _Kalinag_."

_Kalinag _was as painful as _King Ajay_, maybe it wasn't the best pick for a name, "I guess I just wasn't thinking like a King before. Now I'm hoping to keep things a bit more… I'm not sure. Respectable? For the people of Kyrat, you know?"

"Respectable? Half the country has seen me naked."

"I'm less worried about that," I said, "More about… giving them something they can feel proud about."

"A proper courtship?"

"Yeah. Something that other countries have. Something that blows up into a news story makes them proud. Bhutan had a big royal wedding and invited guests from all around the world."

"That sounds nice. Is that what you want?"

"I never really thought about it until now," I said, passing the joint back, "But I like you. That's… that's pretty much where I am after everything that happened. And by that I just mean all of _today_."

She smirked, taking a long drag, "It's sure been one for the ages."

We walked hand in hand back inside to Hurk's arm around Prana, full glasses of Mr. Chiffon's whiskey (though notably his and Yogi's absence), and Reggie and the others laughing and sharing slurred tales of how they came to Kyrat. We poured another round for Tara and I, and joined in the story.

"Ajay," Hurk said, "What was the first time you saw Kyrat?"

"I was born here," I said.

"Right, right, no doubt." Hurk was pretty drunk. Which must have been an impressive feat given his weight and experience.

"Yeah, but _this _time," Reggie said, "What did you see when you arrived in Kyrat this time around?"

"Ah yeah. Well," I drank my shot and Hurk immediately poured me another one. Tara passed the joint over to Reggie, "Well, I flew into India, Pagan had the KIT closed, of course. And I took a bus over the border. I met Darpan who assured me that everything would be a-ok..."

"Oh, this is gonna be a good one," Hurk said.


	11. Author's Postscript

**Author's Postscript**

Thank you for enjoying my fic, everyone! I felt a little... let's say empty after I finished my first run of the game and I wanted a little bit more. As depicted here in the story, after Pagan Min offered me another helping of crab rangoon, I shot him in the face. I get that a lot of people like him, but let's keep in mind that among being a heroin fueled dictator who left a trail of bodies across Asia, he also kidnapped a human rights' activist doctor's family and forced her to run part of his empire, which mostly involved running a blood sport (and then had that family killed, probably tortured, and let her just blindly continue to be a dictator's lieutenant in the vain hope that her family might be returned to her). Pagan Min employed a CIA torturer to run another part of his empire, and while Mohan Ghale killed a child in what is probably best described as a crime of passion, Pagan Min had no qualms about killing children just generally.

Pagan Min is not a good guy.

The voice actor actually said he based his character off Christoph Waltz's character Colonel Hans Landa from _Inglourious Basterds, _also known as "The Jew Hunter," the movie's representation of the sociopathic representation of genocide.

Yuma also made her thoughts about the average Kyrati pretty clear: "The people who built this place [Durgesh Prison, basically a gulag] were strong, the followers of Kalinag. Nothing like the pathetic rabble that Kyrat is today."

Anyway, I wasn't big on Amita's vision of a Kyrat that ran on a drug economy, but I'm also not keen on a theocratic state: Buddhist, Hindu, or otherwise. So I went with Amita over Sabal. When I was sent to kill Sabal, I let him live. But after shooting Pagan in the face over his crab rangoon, I went to Tirtha and then saw that Amita had no intention on freeing Kyrat. So I killed her and her followers.

I ran around the map trying to find Sabal, or Bhadra, or anything else that might be available, but as you know, there wasn't. Bhadra's fate is left ambiguous in the timeline where Amita wins. Sabal, even though I left him alive, is nowhere to be found. In lieu of an expansion to fill in these gaps, a story percolated in my head. Would Amita murder Bhadra? I felt like she would rather send her away, given her feeling for "little girls" and how much she all but accused Sabal of being a pedophile. She'd keep her alive, but with her despotic intentions would send her away where Bhadra couldn't be easily found.

And Sabal, before going and starting a revolution of his own would do a little soul searching. He'd start in the ruins of Jalendu Temple. And if he found out that Ajay was actually he King, well, finding a living relative of the King would be his ideal Kyrat, wouldn't it?

That said, I have found that people tend to take Ajay's claim to the throne for granted. It makes _some _sense, sure. But I think it's just as likely (if not more) that Pagan Min _lied _to Ajay at the end of the game. Hence why I had to contrive a distant pedigree for Ajay's claim to the throne. Think about it. If you do the secret ending of the game, Pagan Min doesn't tell Ajay that he's the king. He only does that after you've fought through three acts worth of his Fascists, destroyed all of his propaganda towers, assasinated his commanders, destroyed his outposts and turned them over to the Golden Path, invaded his Palace, and held him at gunpoint. Leaving the Kingdom in the hands of Ajay was anything but a blessing, especially considering Ajay's relationship with whichever of the Golden Path's commanders you let live.

Though, I didn't want to write a 100-chapter book on Ajay trying to wrestle Kyrat under control of a newly hostile Golden Path and wanted a happy ending. With an Ajay that got laid, got over the shattering of his family, and a Himalayan Kingdom walking out of twenty years of war into a cautiously hopeful future.

Since everyone liked my elaborations on Kyrati history, I'll be working on _The History of Kyrat _next.


End file.
